1,517 research outputs found
Markov Decision Processes with Applications in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of autonomous and resource-limited
devices. The devices cooperate to monitor one or more physical phenomena within
an area of interest. WSNs operate as stochastic systems because of randomness
in the monitored environments. For long service time and low maintenance cost,
WSNs require adaptive and robust methods to address data exchange, topology
formulation, resource and power optimization, sensing coverage and object
detection, and security challenges. In these problems, sensor nodes are to make
optimized decisions from a set of accessible strategies to achieve design
goals. This survey reviews numerous applications of the Markov decision process
(MDP) framework, a powerful decision-making tool to develop adaptive algorithms
and protocols for WSNs. Furthermore, various solution methods are discussed and
compared to serve as a guide for using MDPs in WSNs
EC-CENTRIC: An Energy- and Context-Centric Perspective on IoT Systems and Protocol Design
The radio transceiver of an IoT device is often where most of the energy is consumed. For this reason, most research so far has focused on low power circuit and energy efficient physical layer designs, with the goal of reducing the average energy per information bit required for communication. While these efforts are valuable per se, their actual effectiveness can be partially neutralized by ill-designed network, processing and resource management solutions, which can become a primary factor of performance degradation, in terms of throughput, responsiveness and energy efficiency. The objective of this paper is to describe an energy-centric and context-aware optimization framework that accounts for the energy impact of the fundamental functionalities of an IoT system and that proceeds along three main technical thrusts: 1) balancing signal-dependent processing techniques (compression and feature extraction) and communication tasks; 2) jointly designing channel access and routing protocols to maximize the network lifetime; 3) providing self-adaptability to different operating conditions through the adoption of suitable learning architectures and of flexible/reconfigurable algorithms and protocols. After discussing this framework, we present some preliminary results that validate the effectiveness of our proposed line of action, and show how the use of adaptive signal processing and channel access techniques allows an IoT network to dynamically tune lifetime for signal distortion, according to the requirements dictated by the application
Wireless industrial monitoring and control networks: the journey so far and the road ahead
While traditional wired communication technologies have played a crucial role in industrial monitoring and control networks over the past few decades, they are increasingly proving to be inadequate to meet the highly dynamic and stringent demands of today’s industrial applications, primarily due to the very rigid nature of wired infrastructures. Wireless technology, however, through its increased pervasiveness, has the potential to revolutionize the industry, not only by mitigating the problems faced by wired solutions, but also by introducing a completely new class of applications. While present day wireless technologies made some preliminary inroads in the monitoring domain, they still have severe limitations especially when real-time, reliable distributed control operations are concerned. This article provides the reader with an overview of existing wireless technologies commonly used in the monitoring and control industry. It highlights the pros and cons of each technology and assesses the degree to which each technology is able to meet the stringent demands of industrial monitoring and control networks. Additionally, it summarizes mechanisms proposed by academia, especially serving critical applications by addressing the real-time and reliability requirements of industrial process automation. The article also describes certain key research problems from the physical layer communication for sensor networks and the wireless networking perspective that have yet to be addressed to allow the successful use of wireless technologies in industrial monitoring and control networks
An Energy Driven Architecture for Wireless Sensor Networks
Most wireless sensor networks operate with very limited energy sources-their
batteries, and hence their usefulness in real life applications is severely
constrained. The challenging issues are how to optimize the use of their energy
or to harvest their own energy in order to lengthen their lives for wider
classes of application. Tackling these important issues requires a robust
architecture that takes into account the energy consumption level of functional
constituents and their interdependency. Without such architecture, it would be
difficult to formulate and optimize the overall energy consumption of a
wireless sensor network. Unlike most current researches that focus on a single
energy constituent of WSNs independent from and regardless of other
constituents, this paper presents an Energy Driven Architecture (EDA) as a new
architecture and indicates a novel approach for minimising the total energy
consumption of a WS
Joint Routing and STDMA-based Scheduling to Minimize Delays in Grid Wireless Sensor Networks
In this report, we study the issue of delay optimization and energy
efficiency in grid wireless sensor networks (WSNs). We focus on STDMA (Spatial
Reuse TDMA)) scheduling, where a predefined cycle is repeated, and where each
node has fixed transmission opportunities during specific slots (defined by
colors). We assume a STDMA algorithm that takes advantage of the regularity of
grid topology to also provide a spatially periodic coloring ("tiling" of the
same color pattern). In this setting, the key challenges are: 1) minimizing the
average routing delay by ordering the slots in the cycle 2) being energy
efficient. Our work follows two directions: first, the baseline performance is
evaluated when nothing specific is done and the colors are randomly ordered in
the STDMA cycle. Then, we propose a solution, ORCHID that deliberately
constructs an efficient STDMA schedule. It proceeds in two steps. In the first
step, ORCHID starts form a colored grid and builds a hierarchical routing based
on these colors. In the second step, ORCHID builds a color ordering, by
considering jointly both routing and scheduling so as to ensure that any node
will reach a sink in a single STDMA cycle. We study the performance of these
solutions by means of simulations and modeling. Results show the excellent
performance of ORCHID in terms of delays and energy compared to a shortest path
routing that uses the delay as a heuristic. We also present the adaptation of
ORCHID to general networks under the SINR interference model
Energy-delay region of low duty cycle wireless sensor networks for critical data collection
Session: Sensor networksThe Conference program's website is located at http://ita.ucsd.edu/workshop/14/talksWe investigate the trade-off between energy consumption and delay for critical data collection in low duty cycle wireless sensor networks, where a causality constraint exists for routing and link scheduling. We characterize the energy-delay region (E-D region) and formulate a combinatorial optimization problem to determine the link scheduling with the causality constraint. A new multiple-degree ordered (MDO) coloring method is proposed to solve this problem with near-optimal delay performance. The impacts of many system parameters on the ED region are evaluated by extensive simulation, providing an insightful frame of reference for design of critical data collection wireless sensor networks.postprin
A critical analysis of research potential, challenges and future directives in industrial wireless sensor networks
In recent years, Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks (IWSNs) have emerged as an important research theme with applications spanning a wide range of industries including automation, monitoring, process control, feedback systems and automotive. Wide scope of IWSNs applications ranging from small production units, large oil and gas industries to nuclear fission control, enables a fast-paced research in this field. Though IWSNs offer advantages of low cost, flexibility, scalability, self-healing, easy deployment and reformation, yet they pose certain limitations on available potential and introduce challenges on multiple fronts due to their susceptibility to highly complex and uncertain industrial environments. In this paper a detailed discussion on design objectives, challenges and solutions, for IWSNs, are presented. A careful evaluation of industrial systems, deadlines and possible hazards in industrial atmosphere are discussed. The paper also presents a thorough review of the existing standards and industrial protocols and gives a critical evaluation of potential of these standards and protocols along with a detailed discussion on available hardware platforms, specific industrial energy harvesting techniques and their capabilities. The paper lists main service providers for IWSNs solutions and gives insight of future trends and research gaps in the field of IWSNs
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